much.
Upstairs, Emily searches for you. You can feel the way she is moving up the steps to the second floor; the house- it -is telling you. Meanwhile, the girls huddle around the kitchen table, Molly alone on the deacon’s bench. Desdemona is prowling on that rickety staircase behind the kitchen, the existence of which is, like so much of this house, an absolute mystery. And you? Once again, as you did one morning in the pit of despair on the other side of this basement-Harry Harlow’s vertical chamber apparatus, reconfigured for a house on the fringes of madness-you curl your knees into your chest and try to lie there, unmoving as an egg.
H allie glanced at Garnet, but she couldn’t quite make out her sister’s eyes in the dim glow of the lantern. She sensed that Garnet had retreated into one of those places where she was gazing at nothing. She wondered if Garnet was about to have one of her seizures-or whether she was in the early stages of one already. She heard their mother call out their dad’s name again. Her mother was upstairs now, going from room to room along the hallway. Hallie guessed that she would head up to the third floor and her and Garnet’s rooms next. She might even pull down that trapdoor to the attic.
“Where do you think he is?” Molly asked, her voice strangely small on a girl Hallie usually thought of as so very big.
“I don’t know.”
The girl looked at Garnet. “Garnet?” she said, but her sister didn’t respond.
“She’s okay,” Hallie said, shrugging.
Upstairs they heard a crash, a small piece of furniture toppling over in Hallie’s mind, and Hallie watched Molly flinch. She knew that she herself had been startled also. But Garnet remained oblivious.
“I’m okay, girls,” their mother called down the stairs. “I knocked into the end table by your father’s and my bed, that’s all!”
“Okay, Mom,” Hallie called back.
“I hope my mom gets here soon,” Molly said.
“Yup.” Hallie didn’t know what else to say. A moment later she heard her mother pulling down the door to the attic, just as she had expected she would, and Molly, unfamiliar with the lengthy groan the hinges made as the door descended, looked a little ashen in the lantern light.
“What was that?” she asked.
Hallie reassured her that it was only the door to the attic, adding, “I know. It sounds really creepy.”
Eventually Emily pounded her way back down the stairs, and Hallie asked her, “Did you really go into the attic?”
“No, I just, I don’t know, I called and shone my light up there.”
“You checked our rooms?”
“Yes, I did check your rooms,” she said, opening the basement door. “Chip?” she yelled down the stairs and bent over, peering underneath the wobbly banister and shining the flashlight into the void. “Chip?” When he didn’t answer, she slammed the door shut and swore, finally succumbing to the fear and frustration she had been experiencing since they lost power and her husband-and, briefly, one of her daughters and their friend- disappeared into the dark. “Damn it! Where is he?” she asked aloud, clearly not expecting an answer. Hallie feared that her mother was on the verge of tears. Normally she would have told her that Garnet might be having a seizure, but she didn’t dare. Besides, what really could her mother do? Most of the time, you just had to wait them out anyway.
“You girls really haven’t seen him?” her mother asked, her voice helpless.
Hallie shook her head but then wondered if her mother could see her and said, “No, Mom.”
She watched her mother go to the wall where the phone usually hung, running her hand along it. It was as if she had forgotten she had a flashlight. “I can’t find the phone!” she was saying. “It’s not in the cradle. I want to call the power company, and I can’t even find the goddamn phone.” A moment later Hallie heard a crash and her mother swearing again, and she knew by the sound it was the casserole dish in which her parents had baked the enchiladas they’d eaten for dinner. But then her mother must have found the phone, because they heard her pressing the buttons. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to work because there was no power. Hallie could have told her that. It was electric. And, as they all knew, there was no cell coverage in this corner of Bethel, which was why her mom had been searching for the regular phone in the first place.
“Fuck!” her mother swore. Hallie had never heard her mother say that word before. “Fuck!”
“Want me to go upstairs and get another flashlight?” Hallie asked. “It would make the kitchen a little lighter.”
“God, no! I want all three of you to stay right here with me,” her mother said, trying to regain a semblance of maternal composure. “I’m sure the power will come back on any second now and your father will reappear-he’s probably outside in the woods this very minute looking for you-and so let’s just stay right where we are. Okay? We’ll stay right here in the kitchen and wait for him,” she continued, and she had barely finished her sentence when, indeed, the lights returned and the refrigerator started to hum and below them the furnace rumbled back into life. Hallie heard the classical music their parents must have been listening to on the public radio station when they were cleaning up the kitchen.
“See what I mean?” her mother said, and she extended her hands, palms up. She looked disheveled, her hair wild, as if she had been awakened in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Garnet sat perfectly still, absolutely unmoved or unaware or uninterested in the fact that the power had been restored. She was indeed having a seizure, and, given the blackout and their dad’s disappearance, Hallie hoped it would be a short one. She looked to see if her mom had noticed yet that Garnet was in her own private world, but her mother was staring down at her feet. She was still wearing only her socks, and they were sopping wet and streaked with mud.
“I guess I’ll need to throw these away,” she said, looking up, and Hallie thought she might have been about to offer a small smile, but she looked over Hallie’s shoulder and gasped, and a second later Molly pushed away from the table and stood, screaming, a ululating, sirenlike wail of terror. And so reflexively Hallie turned around, too.
There in the doorway at the top of the stairs to the basement was their father. His shirt was awash in blood, a great stain spreading from the left of his navel with the speed of toppled house paint on tile. And there in the center of that red tsunami was-and now Hallie started to scream, too-the pearl handle of a carving knife. Her father rolled his eyes up into his head so they looked like golf balls and groaned. Then he fell back against the doorframe, pulled the knife from his abdomen with both hands, and sank slowly to the floor, leaving a long swash of blood against the wood.
Chapter Nine
G arnet felt confused, the way she always did when a seizure had passed: It was as if she had had a nap and missed things that everyone else knew about. But unlike after a nap, she never felt well rested. She felt groggy instead: It was like she had awoken in the middle of the night rather than at a predictable time in the morning.
Now she was aware that her mother was leaving her, speeding down the driveway after their father. The headlights and siren from the ambulance had faded moments ago, and Reseda was here. Holly and Ginger Jackson, too. Her mother had called Reseda and said to come quickly. She had. Before that, however, Molly’s mother had come to the house and retrieved her own daughter. The first thing Garnet recalled seeing when she emerged from the seizure was Molly leaning against her own mom, sobbing, as Mrs. Francoeur stood in the front hallway and ranted about what a mistake she had made letting the girl stay here. Only when Mrs. Francoeur saw Garnet’s father bleeding on the kitchen floor did her rage dissipate. She went from railing about how Emily clearly was part of something evil to crying that the house was cursed and Emily was merely a fool to bring her family here. Meanwhile, Garnet’s mom simply kept pressing dish towels against her dad’s abdomen. Then the ambulance arrived, and Mrs. Francoeur finally went home-though not before making it clear that Molly was never going to be allowed over for a playdate again.
Before her mother left, she had told Garnet that she would be back soon. She had said that Daddy would be just fine. He would get some stitches and be as good as new. But whether soon meant within hours or the next
